Thomas Friedman today in the NY-Times:

If you have an idea in Detroit or Tennessee, promise me that you’ll pursue it, because someone in Denmark or Tel Aviv will do so a second later.

I don’t know if this alternative to gasoline-powered cars will work, but I do know that it can be done — and Detroit isn’t doing it. And therefore it will be done, and eventually, I bet, it will be done profitably.

And when it is, our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet.

What business model am I talking about? It is Shai Agassi’s electric car network company, called Better Place.

I read about Agassi's Better Place Company in my WIRED magazine in August. It's a great article and shows what is really possible when people who are rooted in the 21st century become empowered to redefine how we see things like transportation.

And now you know.


Came to be known by me from Brandon.

I have been totally floored by a show on NPR called Radio Lab. I first heard one of their stories on an episode of This American Life. Hosts Robert Krulwich and Jad Abumrad use a patchwork of people, sounds, stories and experiences that are all centered on one Big Idea. It's science bumping into culture and it is absolutely mind blowing.

The first thing you will notice about these shows is how intricate the production is. It's as close to TV as radio can get...and I mean that as a compliment. I can't even begin to tell you how challenging and awe inspiring these discussions are. Don't take my word from it, just listen to either one of these two episodes and you will be instantly hooked. Oh yea, it's free too.

Links below lead to iTunes:

"Memory and Forgetting" - According to the latest research, remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process. It’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7 second memory.

"Who Am I?" - The "mind" and "self" were formerly the domain of philosophers and priests. Today, it’s neurologists who, armed with giant magnets, are asking the big questions, like "How does the brain make me?" We stare into the mirror with Dr. Julian Keenan, reflect on the illusion of self-hood with British neurologist Paul Broks, contemplate the evolution of consciousness with Dr. V. S. Ramachandran. Also, the story of woman who one day woke up as a completely different person.

It's our car on Google!

Have you seen the new feature in iTunes called iTunes U? The link will take you to the iTunes site and on it you will find courses offered from several universities including MIT, Duke, Texas A&M, Penn State, and many others. There's even a course offered by Concordia Seminary in Elementary Greek in both video and audio formats....FREE!

Yes it's 2:45 a.m. but I am just so blown away by this and it's possibilities that I can't sleep. And the fact that I am looking for airline tickets to Honduras for our youth group mission trip.

The news of the day will be iTunes offering of DRM free music, but iTunes U should be the bigger news.

Not too long ago I talked about a web application called Netvibes. I found the site through an article in Slate whose headline made this audacious promise, "In Search of the Perfect Webpage".

That article and subsequent MP3 details how great Netvibes is and how easy it is to use. Since that already exists I won't use up blog space rewriting it. However I do want to say that after using it for about a month I can't emphasize enough how great it is. I know this will be nauseating to some of you, but it has a very "MAC-trinsic" feel to the setup and interface. Which basically means it's really easy to use.

Here are some links to a couple of screen shots taken from my Netvibes. Oh one other thing, it's completely free and I have received zero spam or e-mails from Netvibes.

1. Here's how I check 19 blogs at once. When a blog has an unread post it's indicated by a red number in parenthesis. I hover my cursor on the blog icon and a drop arrow appears. Which expands the "blog module" to reveal the unread posts (and up to 20 previously read posts). Hovering the cursor over any of the post titles will bring up about fifty words of the post, which I can then decide to click on. Notice for my blog I monitor my comments in the same way.

2. Here's how I cram most of my news and weather on one page. Same principles as the blogs apply. Only this page exists under the "General Tab" at the top of the screen (notice Blogs and Entertainment are my other tags). I have the G-mail module installed so I can view my messages from here as well. How do you install a module...

3. After clicking the "add/browse content" button at the top of the page, this tool bar appears which allows you to add your own URL address (what you do for blogs) or drop in one of the "pre-loaded" feeds thats included in Netvibes.

Again this is free, nothing to download, only give you name and e-mail address. Every "module" can be dragged and moved around in any order you want. The benifits are your ability to check multiple sites at one time, and since it's web based you can pull this up anywhere you have a computer. Still a little skeptical read the article in Slate.

Run, don't walk, over to this new site called NetVibes. I can't tell you much about it since I just started using it, and won't really configure it until tonight but it looks really cool, and it's FREE. I read about it in Slate (article here).
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An excerpt from a post that Kenny sent my way called Why I've Given Up On Youth Group:

I've always been frustrated with my youth group and youth groups in general. Am I completely knocking the youth group model of ministry? No. But, I do believe that it too often and too easily becomes a place to entertain. Youth group morphs into a social club disguised verbally as "fellowship time", exclusive cliques form, and God ceases to be the obvious focus. Once this happens, it's terribly difficult for the people deeply invested in the group to acknowledge.

This came from a blog written by a teenager growing up in the Methodist Church. The blog is called Take My Hand and it's author is named Natalie Stadnick. You might think that the post above, and quote in-particular would be discouraging to me. It isn't, but it is still convicting.

This post, and infact her entire blog is a reminder to me that there are young people out there who are capable and desire to have a transformative relationship with God. My struggle when I come in contact with those kids is that I generally feel like they will be ok if I don't end up being as focused on them as other kids who aren't as engaged. So I guess in someways I play to the lowest common denominator in an effort to not alienate those kids who aren't so keen on Jesus. Maybe that should be different. Maybe I should raise the stakes more not less. Perhaps the kids like Natalie have more power to pull those kids up than I ever would by playing down to them. Definitely something I am going to ponder.

The fact that this post came into my life is interesting in light of the fact that his weekend MCOC, Stamford, and Shiloh are co-sponsoring an event called Revolution. We are going to have some great worship time, a Christian illusionist, and a whole host of other activities. It's definitely not a Taize service, but it will be presenting the Gospel of Jesus in a way that kids will soon not forget. But after it's over I will definitely reflect on it through the lens of the post above and see if what we did was in-fact effective in bringing Jesus into the lives of these kids.

One of the best articles I read all weekend:

How do our kids compete in a flatter world? How do they thrive in a warmer world? How do they survive in a more dangerous world? Those are, in a nutshell, the big questions facing America at the dawn of the 21st century. But these problems are so large in scale that they can only be effectively addressed by an America with 50 green states — not an America divided between red and blue states.

Because a new green ideology, properly defined, has the power to mobilize liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists, big business and environmentalists around an agenda that can both pull us together and propel us forward. That’s why I say: We don’t just need the first black president. We need the first green president. We don’t just need the first woman president. We need the first environmental president. We don’t just need a president who has been toughened by years as a prisoner of war but a president who is tough enough to level with the American people about the profound economic, geopolitical and climate threats posed by our addiction to oil — and to offer a real plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

The Power of Green - New York Times Magazine

And this is just the intro of the article! Friedman asserts that changing the assumption that being green means you are a liberal or a Democrat is vital in putting our country at the forefront of as yet fully realized renewable energy industry. The "Greens" of our society are going to have make similar ideological compromises that those in the Christian community are finding themselves having to make for the sake of elevating the Gospel from the exclusive domain of conservatives or Republicans.

Like some Christians who can't fathom a pro-choice brethren, there will be "greens" who will have a hard time letting a pure capitalists come into the fold and have renewable energy go nuclear (or something like it). But just like elevating the Gospel above the lens of politics and ideology makes it more accessible to those who need Jesus, the same can be said of re-visioning what it means to be "Green."

PS: Yeah don't mess with your template in the new blogger unless you are ready for the consequences....yikes!

You might have to watch this a couple of times, but it's a great at explaining the evolution and revolution of the Internet.

Here are two websites a friend of mine sent to me over this last week. They are pretty cool so I thought I would pass them along. You've already wasted this much time coming to my blog, what's another fifteen minutes right!?

First is the internet radio site called Pandora.com. Pandora was born out of the Music Genome Project which attempts to take the unique musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and singing and vocal harmony - and build associations with other songs based on those criteria. For example I typed in MuteMath, a band who I just discovered and really like, and then Pandora would play one of their songs, and follow it up with songs that are similiar in charecteristics by other artists.

I have really enjoyed this a lot, it's super cool. The only draw back is that you can only listen to a certain number of songs before you have to register. It's still free, and the benefits of registering are great but I haven't registered yet.

Next is liveplasma.com. LivePlasma allows you to see a map of connections for your favorite music artists, movies, directors, and actors. Say you are interested in watching films that have a Darren Aronofsky quality to them. You would simply put in his name and then a map would appear of the films he has done as well as connections to those films that other people might have. Definitely a fun thing to check out.

Did you read this article about the new X-Ray technology the TSA is using to help screen for threats to airlines? Apparently these new machines see through the outer layer of clothing but not the skin, rendering a person basically naked, and at high resolution! The TSA says that they will adjust the settings so that it is as least revealing as possible. I am assuming that means turning up the contrast and brightness ratio. But judging from the man's butt crack in the example photo, not much will be left to the imagination.

Put aside that fact that this technology seems more applicable to a 1980's type of threat (are terrorist really so stupid as to try and get a gun on an airplane) than the threats we face today. Like for example the unscreened cargo that is in the baggage hold of EVERY SINGLE domestic and international flight.

So would it bother you to walk through one of these machines? What if the person watching the monitor only watched people of their same gener? What about kids, specifically your teenage son or daughter walking through the machine? Under what conditions would it be ok with you? If it got you through security at the airport quicker would you do it?

I am a dad. Perhaps I am even reaching the point of becoming a father. I embrace these roles whole heartedly and with a healthy dose of intimidation thrown in too. I am also really thankful that I am in a marriage that views parenting as a partnership that uses each of our strengths and works around our weaknesses. I embrace an egalitarian view of being in a marriage and being a parent. Not that I had a choice in the matter, but it's still all good.

Enter "The Vest," you see pictured to the left. It looks like a normal unassuming vest right? It has the right color of orange, and the proper accenting of black. It also appears to have the right number of "athletic preparedness pockets." Each pocket seems easily accessible in case you are stranded in the woods or downhill skiing and you need quick access to the iPod or PowerBar. At least that is what you assume, until you click on the link that says Detailed View which reveals the true nature of this vest.

I'll let the image soak in for a second...

DadGear appears to have it's heart in the right place. Attempting to masculinize the gear that needs to follow a baby or toddler everywhere they go is certainly a worthy effort, and one I support and am appreciative of. But there is something about seeing a vest like this, and then realizing that it isn't stocked with a GPS device, or a Bowie knife, but instead it's pockets are to be filled with pumped breast milk, diapers, wipes, and a changing pad. That's a little, well um, grounding.

I'll probably end up getting one seeing as how I am not going to be in the woods or snow skiing anytime soon, but I will be having another son. Now if they could put a small video screen in it, that would be really great!

I really like G-mail, however when I opened my account I didn't really choose a very good address (JDIWild). Anyway I have all these folders set up in "Entourage" (the mac version of Outlook), and I am just scared to sever my ties. Anyone have any hints about making the conversion less painful (I would also like to import all my work e-mails into G-mail, can I do that)?

Speaking of G-mail sometimes the ads that pop up in association with the content of an e-mail a person has sent are pretty funny. Brandon sent me something referencing President Bush and this ad came up:

"Why Mommy is a Democrat - littledemocrats.net - The book George Bush doesn't want your kids to read!"

Of course I clicked on it to see if it was for real, and it definitely is.

Check out these sample pages from the book. Pay particular attention to the background information in the illustrations.

So here's the challenge (I don't know if this will be hard or not) is there a "Why Mommy is a Republican" out there (and no, the Bible doesn't count)? I am hoping we can get a literary analysis from either these two Children's Lit experts (you know who you are!)